est, with Sherman's "War is hell" a persistent second.

BROMIDES VIE WITH REALITIES

Many of the letters were remarkable for their genuineness. But the platitudinarians had their day. Such phrases as "vaunted civilization," "saw red," "flower of our manhood," and "torch of liberty" often bobbed familiarly into view.

Some contestants, in their eagerness, forgot to write on the subject of the contest and submitted essays on Wilson's policies, discourses on the strategies of Foch, dissertations on political economy, theses on the Negro problem, and tabloid histories of civilization.

The religious note was sounded in the majority of the letters; a note of bitter cynicism crept into others. Some confessed that the war drove them into the ministry; others, that the war drove them out of it. Hardened newspaper reporters described their passionate love of country. "Disappointingly unchanged," writes one of the few who experienced no spiritual earthquakes; another "never even mailed a letter to France."

The war taught thrift, loyalty, patriotism, courage, thoughtfulness, and sympathy. It taught geography and love of books. It made "citizens of the world." One contestant was stricken with apoplexy; another's hair turned white; some were infected with tuberculosis. "It has made an American out of me," recurs repeatedly. Many learned for the first time in their lives to hate.

"THE MIDNIGHT OF MY LIFE"

"I can no longer pray;" "For me the war will never be over;" "I am weary, unhappy, restless, and adrift;" "It robbed me of much of my capacity for sympathy, kindness, and love;" "I am more nervous and my appetite for tobacco, liquor, and the ladies has increased," are various statements of nervous depression. "This is the midnight of my life," says one whose business has gone to smash. "Things I once held dear are now pitifully cheap," expresses the disillusionment of one writer. "Would my patriotism induce me to buy another Liberty Bond? Never!" writes one who has lost his faith in his country. "The war pulled me up by the roots; my health is shattered; I am an irritable pessimist. There are no holy wars-no government has a right to draft a man to fight," states another.

CONFESSIONS FROM CLERGYMEN

Theologies were disrupted and rebuilt. A Presbyterian minister writes: "Men of knotted hearts are not attracted by easy things. Jesus has been thought of as 'dear' and 'precious' Jesus. And it has not appealed to men. Men did not follow a 'dear' Lincoln, a 'dear' Roosevelt, a 'dear' Foch, but men will follow a rugged, granite, and majestic Christ."

"For the first time in my life I learned that the greatest test of character is what we do when we know we will not be found out," concludes another Presbyterian minister. Many told

us with candor of their faith that divine intervention would keep their sons and husbands from falling in battle.

"It made me lose my interest in religion; the war stopped me from going to all places of amusement. When I see people dancing, I feel like rebuking them. . . . It seems as though all the feeling had been drained from everything else and had been embodied in me. I find I cannot get over the war. I am morbid, grief-stricken, inconsolable," confesses one.

An anonymous New Yorker who wrote his contest letter on Hotel Claridge stationery and claims to be the pastor of one of the largest metropolitan churches, confesses that the war destroyed his belief in God, his faith in Christ, in the Church, and in human nature, and bereft him of his belief in himself. "The war taught me to hate; it disjointed my theology," writes a Cleveland clergyman. "It furnished my heart with a proud sorsow," writes a Pennsylvania clergyman, whose son was killed in battle. "War, always futile, lacks purifying power and brings about no true progress," one contestant laments. "We have lost the tone of our women. Mothers throw their daughters at the heads of soldiers in an ecstasy of patriotism," complains an Atlanta woman.

One woman finds comfort in a knowledge that her brother, wounded in the war, is now at home nights instead of getting into entanglements. Another naïvely confesses that before the war

she was afraid to go downstairs after the lights were out, but that now she goes all over in the dark and sometimes late at night she even goes "to the back porch to get something from the icebox."

REALISM OF THE TRENCHES

The reactions of men who were in the fighting are vividly portrayed. "Before the war," confides a Pennsylvanian, "the sight of blood made me shudder. . . . I became an aviator, and watched, tigerlike, all the movements of a group of Germans, fondled tenderly the bomb in my hands; my whole body trembled lest something untoward should turn up and spoil my kill."

"Had I not been afraid of the scorn of my brother officers and the scoffs of my men, I would have fled to the rear," confesses a Wisconsin officer, writing of a battle. "I see war as a horrible, grasping octopus with hundreds of poisonous, death-dealing tentacles that squeeze out the culture and refinement of a man," writes a veteran.

A regimental sergeant-major: "I considered myself hard-boiled and acted the part toward everybody, including my wife. I scoffed at religion as unworthy of a real man and a mark of the sissy and weakling." Before going over the top for the first time he tried to pray, but had even forgotten the Lord's Prayer.

"If I get out of this, I will never be unhappy again," reflected one of the contestants under shell fire in the Argo

Forest. To-day he is "not afraid of dead men any more and is not in the least afraid to die."

"I went into the army a conscientious objector, a radical, and a recluse. . . . I came out of it with the knowledge of men and the philosophy of beauty," says another.

"My moral fiber has been coarsened. The war has blunted my sensitiveness to human suffering. In 1914 I wept tears of distress over a rabbit which I had shot. I could go out now at the command of my Government in cold-blooded fashion and commit all the barbarisms of twentieth-century legalized murder," writes a Chicago man.

A Denver man entered the war, lost himself and God, and found manhood. "I played poker in the box car which carried me to the front and read the Testament in the hospital train which took me to the rear," he tells us.

"To disclose it all would take the genius and the understanding of a god. I learned to talk from the side of my mouth and drink and curse with the rest of our 'noble crusaders.' Authority infuriated me and the first suspicion of an order made me sullen and dangerous.... Each man in his crudeness and lewdness nauseated me," writes a service man.

REACTIONS OF STAY-AT-HOMES

"When our boy came back," complains a mother, "we could hardly recognize for our strong, impulsive, loving son whom we had loaned to Uncle Sam this irritable, restless, nervous man with defective hearing from shells exploding all about him, and limbs aching and twitching from strain and exposure, and with that inevitable companion of all returned oversea boys, the coffin-nail, between his teeth."

"In the army I found that hard drinkers and fast livers and profanetongued men often proved to be the kindest-hearted, squarest friends one could ever have," one woman reports.

"You lost an arm?' asked a woman of a soldier. 'No, I gave it,' he returned, proudly. If patriotism can breed such an answer from a man who has known the hell of blood and exploding shells, then war must have some soul-growing process," she concludes.

Numerous letters came from women whose husbands or sons were killed in battle. One wife lost her soldier-husband to a French girl; a poignant companion letter describes the tragedy of a soldier who returned home to find his wife devoted to another man and lost to him.

SOCIAL BARRIERS VANISH

Friendship thrived as the result of the war. A North Carolina woman became acquainted with every white person and nearly every colored one in her township. One left her snobbishness in the first hospital ward she entered. Judging from these letters, there are enormous quantities of snobbishness on America's side-tracks for which there is no further

all foreigners in America and that he hates the term "melting-pot," while a Harvard Master of Arts admits that he can never be a good democrat again.

From British Columbia: "We are a small people living small lives in a faroff corner of the world. But for once we lived. We can never be quite so small again."

A Kansas woman was drawn into strenuous Red Cross work by a letter from a dying soldier urging her to carry on. An Illinois woman "learned to dictate pamphlets and speeches while six typewriters banged about me. I came out of the war knowing how to work, not only one day, but every day and all day and all night if necessary." A Texas woman found that "it is terribly important to our Nation what the average American woman thinks and feels." "The war has brought the rest of the world to us, has given us the world for our home, instead of 'Main Street,'" comes from North Dakota.

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A Tacoma physician ably phrased the sense of devotion to the home which the war deeply impressed upon many. "The pathos of distance, almost as if by death, made me know that nothing in life could take the place of home," he writes. "I learned that there are unimaginable treasures of kindness and goodness in men and women. . . . It revealed hidden traits of character in my wife as fine as those of the heroines of history."

The war drove in the lesson of thrift; one "learned to eat horse-meat with relish." A Massachusetts woman "patched impossible B. V. D.'s." "The war made us out-grandmother our grandmothers in point of thrift," claims one. A Rhode Island woman discovered that skill in cake-making counted for more than familiarity with the classics. "It taught the dignity of old clothes," recurs often. "The war doubled my income within the last twelvemonth and is going to double it again within the next few years," boasts a South Dakotan.

Many women were enriched spiritually by discovering something to do. One of them now runs "a restaurant for undernourished children and a club where sixty young aliens nightly meet men and women of broader opportunity. The war has shown me my work and trained me for it. Thousands have had the same experience," she declares.

An amazing record of changed lives is this pile of chronicles of the war. It is a startling panorama of what war does to the human spirit. It contains enough plots for a shelf of novels.

One remarkable thing about these 544 letters is the fact that they disclose that so many people are able to write with candor and vitality about themselves. They reveal, on the whole, a from traditions breaking away of thought and conduct, a new concern with realities, an escape from ruts, a more rugged sense of comradeship with one's fellows. These letters reveal a diminished respect for conventional institutions and heightened respect for men and women.

I

FIRST PRIZE

"DEATH BECAME A
FRIEND"

BY LEE RAMSDELL

WAS in France in 1917-19, first working with the French refugees, then in American hospitals. I went there a snob. I got over it. The uniform was the great leveler. For once we humans looked into each other's eyes, not at each other's rags or Rolls-Royces. was a liberal education. The fineness that existed in rough, uneducated men, the guts that developed in pampered pets, was unbelievable. Now that it's over, shall we be able to keep on seeing the man instead of the manicure?

It

Life, trouble, even death, seem less momentous than they did. The only real calamity is not to meet life gallantly. I remember the troop trains of Americans hip-hurrahing past our hospital on their way to the front, and the ambulance trains slipping quietly back with them, very silent. A terrible Juggernaut had rolled over those eager boys; but had it crushed them? Not they! They climbed on top and made it carry them along! One man suffered agonies for months in the hope of saving a shattered leg. His cot backed against rough boards that smelled of Dakin Solution, and gas gangrene, and fog from the muddy fields outside. But when he talked his room became a drawing-room, with sunshine pouring in, and apple blossoms. And when, months later in Paris, I met him on crutches, the leg gone, he joked about it until he fairly persuaded us that he was glad to have the thing off. And I can still see a young French convalescent, his right sleeve empty to the shoulder, swinging past us down the Champs, so erect and debonair that I almost envied him that badge of honor. Of such metal were our armies.

And, lastly, I came to realize that death was not the end. Oh, yes, I learned it as a child; but when my father died I only knew that he was gone, blown out like a candle. Where? Who knew? No one. Death was a solitary. terrifying thing. But in France it became a friend. Poor tortured boys would feel a blessed surcease from pain and look up to find the Great Physician at their side, bringing merciful rest and the supreme healing. Death was a daily commonplace. Lads were here to-day and to-morrow gone, but their spirits were too young and alive and vivid to vanish with the body, even after we had seen the flag-draped coffins lowered into the ground at "Taps." They were so close and real that at times I felt that I had more friends in the unseen world than in this. It sounds silly, but it's true. . . . And so, when I came home and my own mother died I did not lose her, as I had my father. She sits in the sunny east window with her mending, or we stroll together in the garden and I cry: "Mother, see how lovely your roses are, but what ails those sweet peas? What would you do with them?" During her sickness her little

world was bound by four walls, with perhaps a bit of blue sky or a bird song through the window, and the rest pain. But I was well and free to go where I pleased, to breathe the fresh air and see the moon rise, and speak with friends who came to inquire. I was in and out of her room all day, but often she did not know it. Now our positions are reversed. It is she who is well and free; who has found the ones she lost so many weary years ago, who sees beauties beyond my imagination. My life must seem as cramped and restless as her sick-room did to me. Yet she is in and out all the time-often when I don't know it, I dare say. She has never left me. These are some of the things the war taught me, and the last is the greatest.

SECOND PRIZE "MEMORIES OF THE FINEST COMRADESHIP"

W

BY JAMES V. HICKEY
CORPORAL, 23RD INFANTRY

E were sitting on the barracks' steps the other evening, some of us who had been overseas together, talking or in silence watching what was left of a Texas sunset. The talk had all been of the wars and rumors of war in Europe, recalcitrant Germany, and the possibility of trouble with Japan; all sacrifices had been in vain; the world was the same old world, and the men left in France had, at most, but furnished political issues through which pot-bellied politicians had once got their feet in the trough; we are heroes no more, only Regulars.

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But each in his heart knew that for him the war had not been in vain; that from it had come to him memories of the finest comradeship that ever the selfish earth has seen and the consciousness of duty done to the utmost. The war has given to America a new aristocracy; an aristocracy prouder of its possessions than is any aristocracy of birth or wealth, and its treasure is inalienable. Pre-war promises may never be fulfilled; bonuses may be voted down and the war become only a topic to bore those who battened on it; but our great reward shall be with us as long as we live and to our children's children long after we are gone: memories of the tenderness of great, strong comrades, and the almost intoxicating thought, "I have stood among men and faced hell let loose and did not flinch!"

answers to the other four questions may be inferred.

What did the war give me? Why, friendliness. Like most of us, up to 1916 I lived in a small inclosure of family and family friends. There were others outside, I realized, whom it was pleasant to meet, but whom I seldom did meet, living busy and content inside my wall.

Then came the Red Cross saying, "The need in Europe is greater than your feeble imaginations can grasp. Work." I was not too busy to resist that call, nor were others in my town. We got together, and labored. From every class and clique we came, making friends according to our temperaments, not bound by our family inheritances. So the war gave me friendliness for my town, instead of for two or three streets in it. I can talk as an equal now to my fishman and laundress, because I nursed the wife of one through influenza and received countless favors from the other.

But learning to love my community was only the beginning. The war swept me to Europe, where I grew to love my country. When I came home, I was no longer a New England Yankee, but the new kind that reaches from coast to coast and embraces Irish, Italians, Jews -yes, even Germans of the brand that wore our uniform loyally. There is a new map of the United States in my heart now, which is dotted with the habitations of my friends. Brooklyn used to be merely a standby of the comic papers to me; to-day it is an absorbing spot of drama enacted by those I love. Sandcoulee looms larger than Butte or Denver whenever I write to the brave man who lives there. There are Meridian, York, Portland, St. Louis, Muscogee, and a score of other places where I go in and out in spirit, get discouraged, cheer up, marry, raise a family, break out with measles, recover-and all through the agencies of the men who taught me to be slow in judgment, open of mind, appreciative of good, and patient rather than condemning evil.

Nor was the gift of my town and my country all. The war gave me another home in France. Despite barriers of language, in spite of little opportunity, I learned enough of the French to admire them and desire their good will, and enough of France to think it the second most beautiful country in the world.

What, then, did the war take away? Easy optimism-I have to fight for the optimism I own now; and a clear perception of right and wrong, as there is no doubt that my standards are more confused than they used to be; then, willingness to efface myself for the comfort of others, for my temper is quicker than it once was; but, principally, my old conception of death as an evil thing. Those 36,000 graves at Romagne, the memory of the friend whom I laughed with in the morning and buried in the afternoon, these have made of death only an incident in an unending flow of life.

Yes, the war did change me; it did bring me spiritual upheavals and subtle reactions. But whether I am better for it or worse I could not possibly decide.

There was a set of gold and white cups in the window of a fascinating shop on the Rue St. Honoré and the dark-eyed man in the doorway assured me that they were truly a “find”— Napoleon's own china; witness the gold wreaths and the "N." So I made an engagement with a friend who had been a collector in the days before the war. Saturday afternoon we would go and look at "my" cups. How I wanted them! I looked at my bank account, and I sat down to write to my husband for a little more money. I was still writing when out went the lights, I heard madame the proprietress's voice giving shrill orders to madame the concierge, and strange dull bangs began to be heard across the river. I opened my third-story window and looked out. Clear in the sky were the red and green signal lights of the avions, and strange white lights bloomed for a moment like flowers. "Come up here!" called the girl two floors above, and I groped my way back through my room and up the stairs. There were four other girls there, and we all hung crowded in the small window watching and listening to the dull roars. It was the first raid over Paris! It was a crazy thing for us to lean out of the window, and in later raids we knew better. Also perhaps in later raids we became more fearful; but this first night I think I can say that not one of us was frightened. One of the Y girls kept saying, "Oh, damn them!" I watched the lights go up and up and found myself thinking a sort of wordless prayer for the safety of our men.

And all of a sudden the white and gold cups flashed through my mind. Were they all smashed? And I didn't

care.

Saturday afternoon A spoke of our engagement to look at the cups. "I don't want them," I said. He looked politely incredulous. But it was true. I had known since the night of the raid that I did not want any more things. I wanted the war to end and to give us back our homes in safety and happiness. It did not matter whether there were gold cups in all our drawing-rooms.

Well, a year or so later I came home happy and safe, but I still remembered the gold-wreathed cups, and it was with something of a shock that I saw my friends settling down to the old way of putting their "faith and hope" of happiness in the same old things. I don't mean that I don't want gowns and nice dressy things as much as any one; but when I want them even a great deal the gold cups are likely to flash through my mind-the symbol that taught me the small value of material things. Wouldn't we all be happier as a country if we would remember these hard lessons of the war?

NE of the telling points used by the Republican Campaign Committee was that Wilson was an autocrat. He accepted no advice from the Senate, his Constitutional adviser, and surrounded himself with a Cabinet whose minds ran along with his-a polite way of saying that they were puppets to carry out his will; consequently, we had a one-man Government with Wilson the man.

In contradistinction to this, Senator Harding proclaimed that he had no intention of being the great "I AM.” Louis's famous dictum, "L'état, c'est moi," did not appeal to him. He did not set himself up as omniscient. He intended to take the Senate into his counsel and would invite its President to sit with the Cabinet. Furthermore, he would surround himself with the best minds of the country as members of his Cabinet. On this plea of destroying autocracy as exemplified by Wilson, the Republicans won an overwhelming victory last November. We are interested in knowing how these pre-election campaign promises are being carried out.

Of the three,, two already have been fulfilled. Calvin Coolidge takes his place regularly at the Cabinet table, and President Harding is in almost daily conference with the members of the Senate, notably with Henry Cabot Lodge, Chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee. How about the third promise? Has President Harding surrounded himself with the "best minds in the country"? In order to answer this question correctly I have been making an exhaustive study of the Cabinet. Most of them I have known for many years, the only strange faces being those of the Secretaries of Agriculture and Labor. My opinion of these two men is based solely upon a study of their past careers and on a quickly formed judgment, such as could be made in an afternoon's interview. With this explanation of my sources of information, I will attempt to give an impartial judgment as to whether Harding has surrounded himself with the best minds of the country.

The answer depends entirely upon what he meant by best minds. If he meant that he would surround himself with men who had become internationally famous, men whose very names would inspire confidence in the people, then he has not kept this promise. There are only two men in the Cabinet to whom this would apply. Hughes and Hoover were internationally and favorably known. They were the only two whom grammar school children could immediately identify as National leaders.

Will Hays was known as a very shrewd but fair and able politician. Daugherty had become famous since the nomination as the man who had made Harding possible. Weeks had been a Senator, and had made a good record as such, but he was only one of some

ninety-odd; he was further known as being prominently identified with the last Republican campaign. Fall was known as a Senator from a Southwestern State who devoted his entire time to the Mexican situation and who favored intervention by the United States. The rest of the Cabinet was practically unknown.

In the lobby of the Washington hotel where thousands of men interested in politics gather I questioned one hundred men concerning their opinion of the Cabinet. These men were far above the average in mentality. They were men of affairs. The result of my questionnaire throws an interesting side-light upon the question whether the new Cabinet officers are men who add strength to it by the very weight of their names. It follows:

him were favorably impressed with his capabilities.

Fall-The objection voiced against him was on account of his activity in the Mexican situation.

Davis Two things were notable about the opinions concerning his appointment: First, the few who knew about him at all prior to his selection, and, second, the remarkably large number who thought his selection was wise. The reasons for this favorable comment were that he represented labor, he holding a union card, and yet had not been so active in labor movements nor so radical that he would be unjust to capital.

Wallace He was the only man with a perfect score regarding the wisdom of his selection, the reasons being that his appointment was devoid of politics,

I wish to add some explanations of the opinions expressed that cannot be given in tabulated form:

Hughes-The nineteen men who did Inot think that his selection was wise thought so because they considered him too cold-blooded and aloof to make a good Secretary of State. Seven of them also thought that he was a corporation lawyer.

Mellon-The thirty unfavorable were so because they thought he was too closely allied with capital and might make the Treasury an appendage of Wall Street.

Weeks-His high popularity was because they thought that he, as a middleman, would by his tact keep the divergent wings of the Cabinet pulling together. The nineteen unfavorable were so because they thought it was a "lame duck" appointment, and it was not becoming for a President to use his appointive power to provide jobs for defeated members of Congress.

Denby-It was remarkable how few had ever heard of him. The seven who were favorable to his appointment were so because he had served time in the Navy as an enlisted man, and because it was a just reward for his patriotism. The five unfavorable, because they thought he had not had enough experience to handle such an important position. It may be remarked in his favor that the entire seventeen who knew of

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that he was a representative, typical farmer and farm editor; as a result of which he would make the Agricultural Department of value to the farmer, and not convert it into a political adjunct to the Republican party.

Hays He had one hundred per cent on capability and more than two-thirds considered his appointment with favor. The consensus of opinion was that any one who was capable of managing a political campaign so successfully was a man of ability; furthermore, he was considered an honest politician; and, lastly, his ability, energy, and enthusiasm would enable him to make a wonderful success as Postmaster-General. The thirty-two who opposed his appointment did so because they feared he might convert the Postmaster-General's office into political headquarters.

Daugherty-The fifty-one who орposed him did so because they thought that his appointment was a reward for past service and not because of individual merit.

Hoover-The selection of Hoover was regarded with almost unanimous favor. The few who opposed him were partisan Republican politicians who believed that "to the victors belong the spoils," and who did not regard Hoover as one of them, but as a rank outsider who was appointed as a sop to public opinion.

It will be seen from the tabulated list that the men who have National

reputations are Hughes, Weeks, Fall, Hays, Daugherty, and Hoover. The men regarded as being rightly listed among "the best minds" are Hughes, Hays, and Hoover. They may be known as three "H's." Of the men of National reputation whose appointment the almost unanimous consensus of opinion deemed wise, the list drops to Hughes and Hoover. So much for the opinions of the people as to the wisdom of the President's choice of his Cabinet.

There are, however, other things to be considered in the selection of a Cabinet that will function properly besides the selection of men who are noted as Solomons or who have succeeded in becoming National figures. It may be possible that a man may be particularly adapted to fill successfully the particular Cabinet position for which he is selected without having attained the National reputation that would entitle him to be listed as one of the best minds in the country. Does a closer inspection of the new Cabinet reveal it in a favorable light? What are the real capabilities of its members? These are the questions that I have attempted to solve. Let us therefore study the makeup, characteristics, and past performances of its

various members before we definitely decide as to their fitness for the places for which they have been selected.

Hughes is a university man, a lawyer who stood high at the bar, a successful investigator of the gas and insurance companies, a success as a Governor, and an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States, in which body his decisions were highly respected by the other members of this Court as well as by the leading legal minds of the country. He was a patriotic worker during the war, a man who worked for the cause regardless of political consideration, who expressed his views in support of the Administration regardless of the attitude of his party. He is a man of the highest integrity. Such is the man who is the premier of Harding's Cabinet.

Mellon is the head of large banking and financial interests in Pennsylvania which he succeeded in building up through his own individual efforts. His name is a power in the financial and business world. His personal success as a financier (he is supposedly the second richest man in the United States) would indicate that he has the ability to manage successfully, as head of the

Treasury Department, the financial interests of the Government. Mr. Mellon is a man of fine mind. He has a dominating personality that ill brooks opposition. There is little doubt that Secretary Mellon will personally direct the affairs of the Treasury Department with very little interference from President Harding or other members of the Cabinet, or by the political bosses of the Republican party. Secretary Mellon will be a power in the Cabinet. His power will be used along conservative lines. His selection will give confidence to timid capital. This confidence should do much to strengthen the very shaky financial condition of the country to-day. Under him business will be fostered and not hampered by unjust attacks upon it; therefore his selection will be beneficial to the country.

Weeks came out of the Navy with only a clean pair of hands and a well-equipped brain to enter the battle of life, and he has succeeded in amassing a fortune. He also took an active interest in politics, with such success that he became a United States Senator from Massachusetts and Chairman of the Senate Committee of the Republican party, which would indicate that he had more than